Students write hashtag in exam, papers deemed ‘unfair’

Mumbai: Around 10 to 12 final-year students of a Kandivali-based engineering college had to face the music for writing '#onelasttime' in five subjects' answer papers during their examination.

The hashtag represents the phrase 'one last time, one last exam'. The college subsequently sent a notice to the students, a copy of which is with

The Asian Age, informing them that their answer papers are being considered 'unfair'.

A student, whose roll number is mentioned in the circular, said, "We decided to write it out of excitement. We did not know that it would be such a big issue." Most of the students wrote the phrase in paper on 'Parallel and Distributed Computing', which was their first exam. Another student said, "We wrote it in almost three to four papers. If the college would have told us after the first exam itself, we wouldn't have written it in the rest of our papers."

According to the University of Mumbai (MU) guidelines, usage of any phrase or word apart from answers to questions is considered 'cheating' and is referred to as the student 'giving a sign' to the assessor. "Some students tend to write name of their God or draw religious symbol as they feel it will make their exams easy.

However, resorting to these tactics is unfair and any such act is considered 'unfair work' and colleges have been instructed to take appropriate action against the student," said a senior official of the varsity.